Hi y’all,
I’m sorry if this question has already been asked, but I can’t find any other recent questions like this. Our team would like to participate in skills. However, we don’t have a full field because of funding problems. We also don’t have any sensors because of funding problems. I was wondering what is your guys’ advice for programming an auto skills routine with only half a field. The only solutions I could think of were to calculate the number of individual motor degrees turned based on the distances the robot needs to travel from the field diagrams or to make a program that copies our driver skills program and just replicate our driver routine. Do you guys think any of these suggestions are feasible? Or are there any alternatives?
Edit: We do have V5(which is where a lot of our money went) so technically we do have encoders as sensors.

Try to find a team or school nearby that has a full field and ask if they would let you practice on it, or look for people hosting events that would let you use a field (we hosted a scrimmage and practice at Robot Mesh tonight, for example). If you’re the only team for miles, you’re just going to have to calculate and hope it works when you get to your tournament. There will also be practice fields at many tournaments where you might be able to get in a run or two.

With only encoders (sounds like you have those, maybe within the V5 smart motors), you can still measure all your distances well. You can also push the robot into the wall to make sure it’s properly oriented. Do that every now and then to correct for slightly-off turns. Yes, you could make a pretty good autonomous skills program doing it this way. Balls could cause problems, but everything else will be where it is supposed to be without other robots messing things up.

Try to find a team or school nearby that has a full field and ask if they would let you practice on it, or look for people hosting events that would let you use a field (we hosted a scrimmage and practice at Robot Mesh tonight, for example). If you’re the only team for miles, you’re just going to have to calculate and hope it works when you get to your tournament. There will also be practice fields at many tournaments where you might be able to get in a run or two.

What he said. What i would do is write out the whole code and when you get to the competition just go in and add the times.

You could only run a program to use half of the field, but that’s just silly.

Actually, with 23 of the 35 points available with only half of the field, this could be very viable to build a programming skills run from. In addition, it could be expanded to use the other half of the field if needed later on.

Actually, with 23 of the 35 points available with only half of the field, this could be very viable to build a programming skills run from. In addition, it could be expanded to use the other half of the field if needed later on.

Sure, but a lot of the skills runs I’ve seen rely on a circular pattern, looping around the platforms. Also, it just seems harder than need be to only work with half of a field. It can be a temporary solution, but nothing that could probably be too permanently competitive.

Also: which half of the field are we talking about? I was envisioning cutting the field between the two Driver stations, having some flags and some posts.